Narae Lee

Narae has served 12 years in Midtown, New York City in law firm management and enterprise risk management at long-established top litigation firms and a new large bank. Currently, Narae is a risk advisor to commercial banking businesses based in New York City & San Francisco.

As of August 2025, Narae serves First Citizens Bank (FCB) cross-functionally to bring business alignment in issues management practices for all issue-types identified. She is positioned to drive timely, consistent, high quality and sustainable mitigation in issues management and risk programs alignment at First Citizens Bank (FCB) and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) - a division of FCB. As a first-line-of-defense risk manager, Narae works with experienced business risk advisors and business program advisors to support execution of FCB's heightening standards and processes designed by the second-line-of-defense's Enterprise Risk Management programs.

Narae stepped into her continuously evolving roles in ERM after graduating from Columbia ERM's Master's program with an esteemed risk management network, as well as a Top 5 student designation in Spring of 2021.

Prior to ERM, Narae was a skilled law firm compliance and case management professional in audit response, conflicts-of-interest, and court protocol in litigating law firms. She spent 5 years in Professional Responsibility at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and 3 years in the Managing Attorney and General Counsel’s Office at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. Narae received her Bachelor’s degree in Politics from New York University, concentrated in International Politics, with a minor in Economics, concentrated in Economic Policy.

Narae serves as an adjunct lecturer to ERM Capstone, and has previously served as a lecturer to Cognitive Bias & ERM and Value-Based ERM and as a Teaching Associate to 5 ERM courses - Company Failures, Traditional ERM, Operational Risk Management, Strategic Risk Management, Cognitive Bias & ERM.

Narae derives her instruction from current industry perspectives, approaches, and skills bred from decades-experienced practitioners from academia and business. This is part of Columbia ERM's scholar-practitioner-based mission in providing students with risk management fundamentals, the latest practical skills and insights, and innovative approaches to enterprise risk management. These ERM skills enable companies to make better risk-reward decisions that enhance an organization's overall value and satisfy key stakeholders.